"The reason it works, for the moment, in the Netherlands"
A pointe line in this article... Our fear is that we're racing also towards a two-party system. The dutch electorate isn't that interested in politics so if they have to make a choice between all those different views they rather stay home then go to the voting box.
Pim Smit
Netherlands

Interesting article, but quite biased in favor of US Democrats, and unnecessarily so. Why single out US Republicans for ignoring maths/accounting? Neither Democrats nor the Obama administration have a budget plan, other than gradually driving the US to bankruptcy with inflated entitlement spending.

It's interesting to hear that Mr Romney does not have actual figures for the nation's spending. As a VC he would have completely ignored any investment request that were lacking complete financial projections over several years.
Looks like the man doesn't want to drink his own medicine.

So called democracies did well when the voting right was limited to those who had stake in good governance. Now parties promise moon to get votes and get elected. A long slide is on as soon as OPEC decided get realistic price for their commodity and Democratic Governments went on a QE spree to please voters. National debt has been increasing to untanable levels to please vote banks and please bankers.

Isn't it more accurate that too many think-tanks and special interest groups in America call themselves non-partisan despite clearly having a horse in the race? When so many so-called neutral groups are anything but neutral they have the tendency of reducing the legitimacy and essentially crowding out truly non-partisan organizations.

Didn't the Dutch government lie along with other EU governments that there was no bailout clause in the eurozone when the euro was introduced 13 years ago
Now that was one of the biggest lies ever told but Europeans seem to have forgotten that one now.
We are now on what the 2nd or 3rd bailout for Greece.

The politicians in the Netherlands talk about nothing else than the CPB data from the moment that it was released. They refer to conclusions from the CPB, as if it are facts. I would like to hear more about their ideology and ideas. But unfortunately the only thing I see on television are politicians blaming each other that they will create more jobs, cause the CPB said so.

We in India feel Americans should count it as their blessings that they have only two major political parties to contend with . Our experience has been that when you have many parties , and in the event no political party wins a majority to form goverment on their own , coalition govt becomes a necessity . Coalition govt will always entail compromises and conservative policies only meant to keep the Government a float . India has been suffering from the ill effects of too many parties in the fray and the coalition party politics for too long and is longing for elections scenario with very few major political parties to work with .
Every country has its uniqueness which has served them better for long, no necessity to copy other systems . We have lot of respect for American election system .

Could we have a neutral arbitrator in the US...yep but it would have to be absent any federal role. the CBO, has ceased to function as unbiased. and the state run Media has been shilling for the Democratic party since the 1960's. Our colleges and universities lean left with 80% of the professors pro socialism.
Holland has it much easier if the dykes fail tomorrow no one would notice

This is a Murdochist hatchet job. The US does not have "state run media" and colleges and universities are not under "state control" except for the state universities and colleges [where control is usually minimal]. The most prominent Universities [Harvard, Yale, Princeton, M.I.T., Northeastern, etc. are private.]
................
Perhaps I was too hasty in blaming the Murdoch/FOX/GOP/TEA Propaganda Party, the ideas presented sound a lot like Chinese or Russian agitprop, with precious little relevance to the real world, not to mention the real USA.

It doesn't have a state run media???? ABC,CBS,NBC, CNN ,PBS WashPOst NYT meet everyday in the WH for the stories the WH wants cover and the spin. You only need to watch the nightly news to see Every station broadcast the exact sames stories, in the same sequence with the exact same take.
As for todays colleges and universities 95% of the professors and administrators are left wing nuts

The US media divides left and right, MSNBC is obviously more left than NBC, and FOX is the propaganda arm of the ultra right Murdoch/GOP/TEA Party. You are such an obvious propagandist, with such an obvious line of absurdities that I won't waste much time on you.

If you don't want a liberal [i.e. leftish] education in the US, you can go to one of the large number of private superstition academies where biology class features the Bible. Be sure to visit the Flintstones as history exhibit in the Creationist Museum. So compared to these sources of ignorance, the education provided in our many fine colleges and universities [not to mention those in Europe] might very well seem leftist.

You obviously know nothing about the US, where states are arguably more independent than EU countries. Your agitprop would be more effective if you actually had real facts to base it on.

P.S. Your post sounds remarkably like the nonsense peddled by Palin, Bachman, Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Akin and other US conservatives who are somewhat to the right of Attila the Hun. If that is where you get your bilge, I suggest finding more reliable sources.

Obviously you don't live in this country ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS are all far left news stations just like the NYT and WashPost. and have been that way since 1965. Your obviously a obummer apologist and thinking isn't something that your good at.
Yea the ultra left universities believe that govt is the answer, creativity and initative need to be purged. Where sports are evil and everyone must take courses in black and women's studies. Where wealth is a crime and rather than equal opportunity businesses must guarantee equal outcomes.
Its a shame your so blinded by your socialist/communist view point that you believe like Obama that Germany in the 30's and 40's is your ultimate goals

Obviously you don't live in this country ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, PBS are all far left news stations just like the NYT and WashPost. and have been that way since 1965. Your obviously a obummer apologist and thinking isn't something that your good at.
Yea the ultra left universities believe that govt is the answer, creativity and initative need to be purged. Where sports are evil and everyone must take courses in black and women's studies. Where wealth is a crime and rather than equal opportunity businesses must guarantee equal outcomes.
Its a shame your so blinded by your socialist/communist view point that you believe like Obama that Germany in the 30's and 40's is your ultimate goals

If sports are evil where is every athletic conference running around trying to establish their own TV network? Have you actually been on a college campus since the sixties? And you're really going to compare today's democratic party to the Nazis? You're absurd and the reason why people can get away with claiming that reality has a liberal bias.

Yep the athletic depts are attempting to finance their programs because Title 9 has eliminated 50% of the sports opportunities and scholarships. The professor left wing radical leaning hasn't changed if anything its gotten worse. If you don't see it then your a big part of the problem.
As for the Democratic party their leader is a card carrying socialist just like their leader in Germany in the 30's and 40"s. He believes that federal laws don't apply to him and his democratic buddies passed a law allowing him and holder to arrest any american citizen with out charges and hold them indefinitely

You are obviously a right-winger who thinks anyone to the left of Francisco Franco is a Communist. I doubt that you know what the terms you use so freely really mean. I grew up in a state with very high educational standards, in high school civics we learned what those terms really mean, in high school biology we studied real science, not religious dogma.

When I was in school, Massachusetts was a swing state, and was more or less equally divide between Democrats and Republicans [who generally refrained from demonizing each other and were able to compromise and cooperate in the common interest].

You probably think that Creationism is science, the Flintstones is history and that the FOX/GOP/TEA 24/7 propaganda channel is fair and balanced. I am sorry that you were unable to get a quality education, but I really think that you should read some books and try to think outside that tiny little airless box.

You grew up n MA a state with low educational standards,hence its near the bottom in states for competitiveness and high on taxation.
As for morality I only have to say Ted Kennedy that shows how deprave the state really is. MA was a swing state??? Really when in 1814??..
When ever the Darwinians poke up their heads its easy to rebuke them as they talk about evolving and when we get to the big bang and all the material that was there an asked how did it get there the answer is always it was just there....utter rubbish.
As for the airless box comment it was what MaryJo had to contend with in Kennedy's car

As some have already pointed out but I now repeat: budget projections can't be fact checked. Sure, some of their underlying facts can be. But they are projections, not facts. The fact is the US has a huge deficit at the federal level of government, and the total debt keeps on growing. That government issuing more debt in order, in part, to buy its own debt, might make things look o.k. for a bit (at the expense of debt markets in Spain, Italy, etc. I might add), but it isn't solving anything.

The two parties in the US disagree, basically, in order to agree. They publicly disagree about non-issues and hurl insults, but they back the ruling elite consensus, which is about trillion dollar national security budgets, wars, occupations, parasitic federal contracting, no power to the working class, etc. etc.

It's beyond unbelievable that this open scandal and fraud has to be going on in this country, and that it is so normal by now. It makes one want to retreat to the mountains. The normalization is the real pain.

List up all the existing tax-exemptions and known loop-holes, including, emphatically,the use of off-shore tax-havens, with the lost revenues attributable to each item (rough estimates will do). Publish the list and ask Paul Ryan (Oh! Do not forget Mitt Romney, too. Or, he would resent the neglect.) what exemptions he plans to abolish and what loop-holes he intends to close.
It will be the simplest litmus-test for his or their characters. If they evades the question, as Romney did with regards to his tax-returns, they are charlatans out to con the Americans into more debt. (Remember what George W Bush did with his tax-cut.)
If they do not evade, then let us see how their supporters and super-PAC-donors react.

Only because, in the US, political terminology is reduced to pejorative insults devoid of their correct meaning.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all."
In the rest of the world you'll never hear anybody described as a "Leftist liberal socialist marxian fascist atheistic Islamist".
Some Bernard Shaw quotes might also help further ellusidate the cause malaise of the US political dialogue.
“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....”
“Whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, and wiser people are full of doubts”
“The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.”
“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

Don't think linearly. It's actually a circle. At the top is the middle and maximal freedom. As you go left, you curve down to the bottom, and as you go right you curve down to the bottom. Both reach minimal freedom but face different directions. The further you go either way, the closer they come together.

The problem in the U.S. is not that most Americans are Uneducated. In fact, the problem in the U.S. is the fact checkers in the press have failed to calculate the ability of non-budgetary borrowing authority cuts. Budgets are filled with allotments. However, Agencies can borrow at will in the market and from the Federal Financing Bank. While Agency debt is not strictly sovereign debt it carries with it an implicit guarantee. When the media (typically left-wing), the academics (typically left-wing), and the so called fact checkers report their findings these facts are left out. They also fail to include government guarantees (some call options) in their analysis. Smug comments not based on the truth (the media)always diatribe against the uninformed voter. The under educated voter is also a scapegoat, but the truth of the matter is the budget is not the sole government instrument impacting the total debt burden of the U.S.

As a side note if U.S. citizens are so under educated why does the U.S. educate so much of the rest of the world? Why does the U.S. have such a large education bubble? Why do Academic opinions even count they taught a large portion of the society?

Two of the largest federal commitments are not even part of the budget...the Social Security Administration and the Postal Service. The latter even touts itself as "the second largest civilian employer in the U.S." (575,000 employees) yet its operating deficit of $3 billion a quarter is funded by selling bonds to the Treasury.

We do not educate so much of the world. We don't even educate ourselves. We provide professional training in vocational schools to a large part of the world's highly trained skilled laborers. Earning a PhD at any of those so-called elite schools is nothing more, really, than getting one's journeyman papers in a trade. Yes, a difficult trade, but merely a trade, nonetheless. The inability to distinguish between schooling and education is a common mistake made by the merely schooled; but never by the educated...

Nobody here claimed education is equivelent to inteligence. Yes you may be right about the trade, but either way the comment above stands. Calling american voters who do not agree with you uneducated is a straw man. The politically ideologs love to represent their side as the intelectuals. All they really perform is indoctrination not analysis.

" Nobody here claimed education is equivelent to inteligence. "
Nor did I. I said that education was not equivalent to schooling. Big difference. You equated intelligence with schooling, not I. They are not equal. For the record, both sides are made up of highly schooled, not at all unintelligent, but woefully uneducated thugs.

I am an American who has lived in a half-dozen countries on three continents and traveled extensively besides. I can say with great confidence that the market of ignorance has not been cornered by Americans.